- Electro from the past, present and future.
- There's a sense of expertise to how Phillip Washington, AKA Cygnus, builds on electro's established style. He sounds like a veteran, despite having only released music since 2012. Some tracks have lush arrangements and bursts of melody, while others work with slow tempos. His latest effort for Central Processing Unit, Deep Analysis, further highlights these strengths.
"Sheffield Bleep" is the obvious standout. A raucous bomb with a vocoder rap, it harks back to electro's hip-hop origins. Vocoder vocals appear again—sung this time—on the slow and stunning "Ultraterrestrial." The lush, twinkling synth lines seem to orbit around the beat in a welcome change from electro's robotic stiffness.
Even Washington's more conventional tracks sound fresh. The funky surveillance-state paranoia of "Hallucinate Data" and the title track, a tribute to Mikron's "Sleep Paralysis," have excellent sound design with synth lines that wobble like Jell-O. Travelling from electro's origins to its present (and future), this EP highlights the style's best features while sounding uncommonly lighthearted.
TracklistA1 Her Majesty (The Universe)
A2 Sheffield Bleep
A3 Deep Analysis
B1 Ultraterrestrial
B2 Decent Of Man
B3 Hallucinate Data